Remote Work in Audit Firms: A Systematic Literature Review and Theoretical Framework

The mass adoption of remote working technologies, facilitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, has permitted a transformation in the work of professional auditors. Where auditors previously worked long hours at the office or on the road near colleagues, remote work has created new work routines that are conducted alone at home. While home-based remote work may be a relatively new phenomenon for auditors, it is not a new phenomenon for knowledge workers in general. In this paper, we perform a systematic literature review across fields such as sociology, psychology, and management information systems to develop an organizing framework for the literature on remote work according to four primary dimensions: organizational factors, employee factors, job-level outcomes and the work-family boundary. From this organizing framework, we propose a theoretical model for how remote work can impact auditors in audit firms bringing in insights from the literature on the audit profession. Our theoretical model proposes that remote work will lead to changes in audit practices that will have implications at the client, employee and firm level. This theoretical model allows us to propose future avenues for research in this rapidly evolving area.